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147-677: According to Book of Genesis 20:12, in conversation with the Philistine king Abimelech of Gerar , Abraham describes Sarah as both his wife and his half-sister ("my father's daughter, but not my mother's"). Such unions were later explicitly banned in the Book of Leviticus ( Leviticus 18:9 ). However, some commentators identify her as Iscah (Genesis 11:29), a daughter of Abraham's brother Haran . By her union with Abraham, Sarah had one child, Isaac . After her death, Abraham married Keturah , whose identity biblical scholars debate (that is, whether or not she

294-717: A famine strikes the region, to Mizraim , present-day Egypt . While in Mizraim, Sarah's beauty attracts the attention of Pharaoh and Abraham, fearing the Egyptians would kill him if they knew Sarah was married to him, introduces himself as her brother and so, Pharaoh bestows upon Abraham great wealth, in the form of livestock and slaves , including Hagar , so that he may take Sarah as his concubine , to live in his palace with him. For Pharaoh's unintentional transgression against Abraham, he and members of his household, save for Sarah, are stricken with plague. Pharaoh then realizes that Abraham

441-460: A great flood to wipe out the rest of the world. When the waters recede, God promises he will never destroy the world with water again, making a rainbow as a symbol of his promise . God sees humankind cooperating to build a great tower city, the Tower of Babel , and divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion. Then, a generation line from Shem to Abram is described. Abram,

588-502: A "gift" to Abraham (6:84; 14:49–50), and 24:26–27 adds that God made "prophethood and the Book to be among his offspring", which has been interpreted to refer to Abraham's two prophetic sons, his prophetic grandson Jacob, and his prophetic great-grandson Joseph . In the Quran , it later narrates that Abraham also praised God for giving him Ishmael and Isaac in his old age ( 14:39–41 ). Elsewhere in

735-640: A 10th-generation descendant of Noah , still alive, living in the Mountains of Ararat , and over nine centuries old at the time of her birth. No details are given as to her life or her religious beliefs before Abraham's return to Ur Kaśdim to thwart Nimrod's efforts to proclaim himself a god. It is known she wed Abraham, then called Abram, sometime between the ages of forty and five and following her husband's public humiliation of Nimrod, she, along with her father Terah, her orphaned nephew Lot, her manservant Eliezer , and some three hundred others left Ur Kaśdim for Canaan ,

882-571: A Prophet, and one of the righteous. Although biblical patriarchs' names such as Jacob , Issachar and Asher can be found in texts like 13th Dynasty Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 and in Middle Bronze Age (MBA), which is a period that most biblical scholars believe the Biblical Patriarchs lived in, and there were Semitic tribal group named Benjamin in Syria at that time, this does not prove

1029-526: A beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, 'this is his wife.' Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you. When brought before Pharaoh , Sarai said that Abram was her brother, and the king thereupon took her into his palace and bestowed upon Abram many presents and marks of distinction. However, God afflicted Pharaoh's household with great plagues. Pharaoh then realized that Sarai

1176-442: A blameless heart and that was why he continued to exist. However, if he did not return Sarah to Abraham, God would surely destroy Abimelech and his entire household. Abimelech was informed that Abraham was a prophet who would pray for him. Early the next morning, Abimelech informed his servants of his dream and approached Abraham inquiring as to why he had brought such great guilt upon his kingdom. Abraham replied that he thought there

1323-461: A bowl of stew. His mother, Rebekah, ensures Jacob rightly gains his father's blessing as the firstborn son and inheritor. At 77 years of age, Jacob leaves his parents and later seeks a wife and meets Rachel at a well. He goes to her father, his uncle , where he works for a total of 14 years to earn his wives, Rachel and Leah . Jacob's name is changed to Israel after his wrestle with an angel , and by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons,

1470-406: A child and was believed to be barren. Isaac prayed for her and she conceived. Rebekah gave birth to twin boys, Esau and Jacob . Isaac was 60 years old when his two sons were born. Isaac favored Esau, and Rebekah favored Jacob. The narratives about Isaac do not mention his having concubines. Isaac moved to Beer-lahai-roi after his father died. When the land experienced famine, he moved to

1617-465: A child. He is the only patriarch whose name was not changed, and the only one who did not move out of Canaan . According to the narrative, he died aged 180, the longest-lived of the three patriarchs. The anglicized name "Isaac" is a transliteration of the Hebrew name יִצְחָק ‎ ( Yīṣḥāq ) which literally means "He laughs/will laugh". Ugaritic texts dating from the 13th century BCE refer to

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1764-443: A decade passed and still, she and Abraham had no children. Thus, Sarah offered Hagar, her slavewoman, as a concubine to her husband so that he may have a child. Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael . During Hagar's pregnancy, Sarah and Hagar's relationship deteriorated rapidly, with Sarah striking her and Hagar fleeing into the desert to avoid her, returning only at the urging of angels. Yahweh then told Abraham that Sarah would give him

1911-460: A king, this time Abimelech , took an interest in Sarah for her beauty and, as he had done in Mizraim, Abraham presented himself as her brother instead of her husband and so, believing her unmarried Abimelech took her into her house as Pharaoh had though, this time, Yahweh intervened before he touched Sarah, through dreams and plague. Abimelech confronted Abraham, angry that his lie had caused him to provoke

2058-429: A literary scholar, based his argument on archaeology and ancient texts. His thesis centered on the lack of compelling evidence that the patriarchs lived in the 2nd millennium BCE, and noted how certain biblical texts reflected first-millennium conditions and concerns. Van Seters examined the patriarchal stories and argued that their names, social milieu, and messages strongly suggested that they were Iron Age creations. By

2205-551: A long period of time. The involvement of multiple authors is suggested by internal contradictions within the text. For example, Genesis includes two creation narratives . By the early 1860s, the leading theory for the Pentateuch's composition was the old supplementary hypothesis. This theory held that the earliest portions, the so-called Book of Origins (containing Genesis 1 and most of the priestly laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers),

2352-493: A male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother— Sarah , Rebekah and Rachel —is barren. The ancestors, however, retain their faith in God and God in each case gives a son—in Jacob's case, twelve sons, the foundation of the chosen Israelites . Each succeeding generation of the three promises attains a more rich fulfilment, until through Joseph "all

2499-473: A man descended from Noah, is instructed by God to travel from his home in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan . There, God makes a promise to Abram, promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars, but that people will suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they will inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates ". Abram's name

2646-514: A number of variations and revisions of the documentary hypothesis have been proposed. The new supplementary hypothesis posits three main sources for the Pentateuch: J, D, and P. The E source is considered no more than a variation of J, and P is considered a body of revisions and expansions to the J (or "non-Priestly") material. The Deuteronomistic source does not appear in Genesis. More recent thinking

2793-473: A patriarch identifies his wife as his sister; scholars debate the relationship among these, with some saying that the account of the encounter of Abraham and Sarah with Pharaoh in Genesis 12-13 is the oldest, while the stories of Abraham and Sarah encounter King Abimelech in Genesis 20, and of Isaac and Rebecca 's encounter with a different King Abimelech in Genesis 26, are interpretations of that one, generated to explain it or deal with other matters of concern. It

2940-549: A pillar of salt for going against his word. Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, get Lot drunk so they can become pregnant by him, and give birth to the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites . Abraham and Sarah go to the Philistine town of Gerar , pretending to be brother and sister (they are half-siblings). The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her (as she

3087-495: A promise from God that they will one day be able to have children. Sarah is also the focus of one of several stories collected in Sarah and After by Lynne Reid Banks . In the 1994 film Abraham , Sarah is portrayed by Barbara Hershey . Sarah is also a subject discussed in nonfiction books. In Twelve Extraordinary Women by Pastor John F. MacArthur , her life and story is analyzed along with that of Eve , Rahab , Ruth , Hannah ,

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3234-454: A prophet, of the righteous", and that God blessed them both ( 37:112 ). In a fuller description, when angels came to Abraham to tell him of the future punishment to be imposed on Sodom and Gomorrah , his wife, Sarah , "laughed, and We gave her good tidings of Isaac, and after Isaac of (a grandson) Jacob" ( 11:71–74 ); and it is further explained that this event will take place despite Abraham and Sarah's old age. Several verses speak of Isaac as

3381-496: A relatively large number of drashot dedicated to the matriarch, but she is repeatedly depicted as a model of personal and religious excellence. This is marked break from the biblical and Second Temple literature in which she plays a far more ancillary role. In light of parallels between the rabbis' characterization of Sarah and early Christian themes connected to the Virgin Mary popular in this same period, it has been suggested that

3528-457: A righteous servant of God . Isaac, along with Ishmael , is highly important for Muslims for continuing to preach the message of monotheism after his father Abraham . Among Isaac's children was the follow-up Israelite patriarch Jacob , who is also venerated as an Islamic prophet. Isaac is mentioned seventeen times by name in the Quran , often with his father and his son, Jacob. The Quran states that Abraham received "good tidings of Isaac,

3675-502: A single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled the Second Temple and who traced their origin to Moses and the wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many issues, and each had its own "history of origins". However,

3822-447: A son, the prophet Isaac (Isḥāq). However, notable differences exist in the portrayal of her relationships with Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael. She is not portrayed as Abraham's sister but his first cousin, said to be the daughter of Terah's brother, Haran, and Hagar is not portrayed as Abraham's mistress but a second wife, eliminating the hostility that Sarah feels for Hagar during her pregnancy and toward Ishmael. The Quran likewise repeats

3969-469: A son. Sarah, then ninety years old, laughed at this idea. But, as prophesied, she became pregnant with Isaac and she nursed him herself. She would ultimately demand that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away and so, Abraham banished them and sent them into the desert. Sometime after the birth of Ishmael but before the birth of Isaac, Sarah and Abraham travel to Gerar , as described in Genesis 20, where events took place which mirrored those of Mizraim, in which

4116-402: A son. While at the tent entrance, Sarah overheard what was said, and she laughed to herself about the prospect of having a child at their ages. The visitor inquired of Abraham why Sarah laughed at the idea of bearing a child, for her age was as nothing to God. Sarah soon became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham, at the very time which had been spoken. The patriarch, then a hundred years old, named

4263-594: A special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob). In Judaism , the theological importance of Genesis centres on the covenants linking God to his chosen people and the people to the Promised Land . The name Genesis is from the Latin Vulgate , in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek Γένεσις , meaning 'origin'; Biblical Hebrew : בְּרֵאשִׁית , romanized:  Bərēʾšīṯ , 'In [the] beginning'. Genesis

4410-568: A thousand pieces of silver to serve as Sarah's vindication before all. Abraham then prayed for Abimelech and his household, since God had stricken the women with infertility because of the taking of Sarah. Sarah dies at the age of 127, and Abraham buys a piece of land with a cave near Hebron from Ephron the Hittite in which to bury her, which is the first land owned by the Israelites in Canaan according to

4557-486: Is circumcision ; and the last, which does not appear until the Book of Exodus, is with Israel alone, and its sign is Sabbath . A great leader mediates each covenant ( Noah , Abraham, Moses), and at each stage God progressively reveals himself by his name ( Elohim with Noah, El Shaddai with Abraham, Yahweh with Moses). Throughout Genesis, various figures engage in deception or trickery to survive or prosper. Biblical scholar David M. Carr notes that such stories reflect

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4704-553: Is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother...Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise...Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman." In the early and middle 20th century, leading archaeologists such as William Foxwell Albright and biblical scholars such as Albrecht Alt believed that

4851-459: Is Sarah's husband, not only her brother. Despite Abraham's willful deceit of Pharaoh, Pharaoh does not punish Abraham nor does he require the return of the wealth Abram was given in exchange for Sarah. However, he orders them to leave Mizraim. After leaving Mizraim, Lot splits from their group amicably. He eventually settles in Sodom , over disputes related to the livestock. They returned to Canaan , and

4998-553: Is about to lay the knife upon his son, "the Angel of the Lord" restrains him, promising him again innumerable descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (believed to be modern Hebron ) for a family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; after proving herself worthy, Rebekah becomes Isaac's betrothed. Keturah , Abraham's other wife, births more children, among whose descendants are

5145-552: Is also known as a Sidra (or Sedra / s ɛ d r ə / ). The parashah is a section of the Torah (Five Books of Moses) used in Jewish liturgy during a particular week. There are 54 weekly parshas, or parashiyot in Hebrew, and the full cycle is read over the course of one Jewish year. The first 12 of the 54 come from the Book of Genesis, and they are: Isaac Isaac

5292-504: Is ambiguous), and urged her husband to cast out Hagar the bondservant and her son, so that Isaac would be Abraham's sole heir. Abraham was hesitant, but at God's order he listened to his wife's request. At some point in Isaac's youth, his father Abraham took him to Mount Moriah . At God's command as the last of ten trials to test his faith, Abraham was to build a sacrificial altar and sacrifice his son Isaac upon it. After he had bound his son to

5439-589: Is associated with the covenant of grace, into which her son Isaac enters. The Epistle of James chapter 2, verses 21–24, states that the sacrifice of Isaac shows that justification (in the Johannine sense) requires both faith and works. In the Epistle to the Hebrews , Abraham's willingness to follow God's command to sacrifice Isaac is used as an example of faith as is Isaac's action in blessing Jacob and Esau with reference to

5586-446: Is based on Genesis chapter 24, verse 63 ("Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide"). Isaac was the only patriarch who stayed in Canaan during his whole life and though once he tried to leave, God told him not to do so. Rabbinic tradition gave the explanation that Isaac was almost sacrificed and anything dedicated as a sacrifice may not leave the Land of Israel . Isaac was

5733-758: Is believed to be buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs (known by Muslims as the Sanctuary of Abraham ). The compound, located in the ancient city of Hebron , is the second holiest site for Jews (after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem ), and is also venerated by Christians and Muslims, both of whom have traditions which maintain that the site is the burial place of three biblical couples; Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca , and Jacob and Leah . There are three stories in Genesis where

5880-536: Is changed to "Israel", and through the agency of his son Joseph , the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them a future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus (departure). The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all humankind (the covenant with Noah ) to

6027-399: Is changed to 'Abraham' and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah (meaning 'princess'), and God says that all males should be circumcised as a sign of his promise to Abraham. Due to her old age, Sarah tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar , as a second wife (to bear a child). Through Hagar, Abraham fathers Ishmael . God then plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for

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6174-432: Is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50). The primeval history sets out the author's concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind's relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for humans, but when man corrupts it with sin, God decides to destroy his creation, sparing only the righteous Noah and his family to re-establish

6321-562: Is eliminated. This antiquity was needed to prove the worth of Israel's traditions to the nations (the neighbours of the Jews in the early Persian province of Judea), and to reconcile and unite the various factions within Israel itself. Describing the work of the biblical authors, John Van Seters wrote that lacking many historical traditions and none from the distant past, "They had to use myths and legends for earlier periods. In order to make sense out of

6468-485: Is found in the Roman catacomb frescoes . Excluding the fragments, Alison Moore Smith classifies these artistic works in three categories: Abraham leads Isaac towards the altar; or Isaac approaches with the bundle of sticks, Abraham having preceded him to the place of offering ... Abraham is upon a pedestal and Isaac stands near at hand, both figures in orant attitude ... Abraham is shown about to sacrifice Isaac while

6615-416: Is interpreted by Christians as the " fall of man " into sin . Eve bears two sons, Cain and Abel . Cain works in the garden, and Abel works with meat; they both offer offerings to God one day, and God does not accept Cain's offering but does accept Abel's. This causes Cain to resent Abel, and Cain ends up murdering him. God then curses Cain . Eve bears another son, Seth , to take Abel's place in accordance to

6762-446: Is most frequently attested in the early 2nd millennium BCE rather than in later periods. The biblical historian A. Jopsen believes in the connection between the Isaac traditions and the north, and in support of this theory adduces Amos 7:9 ("the high places of Isaac"). Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth hold that, "The figure of Isaac was enhanced when the theme of promise, previously bound to

6909-471: Is normally excluded). Since the name YHWH had not been revealed to them, they worshipped El in his various manifestations. (It is, however, worth noting that in the Jahwist source, the patriarchs refer to deity by the name YHWH, for example in Genesis 15.) Through the patriarchs, God announces the election of Israel, that is, he chooses Israel to be his special people and commits himself to their future. God tells

7056-533: Is not clear which of the stories is actually older, or what the intent of the editors of the Bible may have been. According to Emanuel Feldman (1965), basing his argument on Albright 's interpretation of the archaeology of Nuzu , a wife could legally be awarded the title "sister", and that this was the most sacred form of marriage, and hence Abraham and Isaac referred to their wives as "sisters" for this reason. Most archaeologists however dispute that view, instead arguing

7203-570: Is one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites and an important figure in the Abrahamic religions , including Judaism , Christianity , and Islam . Isaac first appears in the Torah , in which he is the son of Abraham and Sarah , the father of Jacob and Esau , and the grandfather of the twelve tribes of Israel . Isaac's name means "he will laugh", reflecting the laughter, in disbelief, of Abraham and Sarah, when told by God that they would have

7350-441: Is really Abraham's wife) and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son and tells her she should name him Isaac ; through him will be the establishment of the covenant (promise). Sarah then drives Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into the wilderness (because Ishmael is not her real son and Hagar is a slave), but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation. Then, God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac . As Abraham

7497-630: Is that J dates from either just before or during the Babylonian Exile, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after. The almost complete absence of all the characters and incidents mentioned in primeval history from the rest of the Hebrew Bible has led a sizeable minority of scholars to conclude that these chapters were composed much later than those that follow, possibly in

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7644-406: Is that of difference between the ancestors and the indigenous Canaanites… In fact, the theme of the differences between Judah and Israel, as personified by the ancestors, and the neighboring peoples of the time of the monarchy is pressed effectively into theological service to articulate the choosing by God of Judah and Israel to bring blessing to all peoples. According to Martin Noth , a scholar of

7791-532: Is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament . Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word , Bereshit ( 'In the beginning' ). Genesis purports to be an account of the creation of the world , the early history of humanity, and the origins of the Jewish people . Genesis is part of the Torah or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Tradition credits Moses as

7938-665: The Babylonian Exile ( c.  598 BC  – c.   538 BC ). At the end of the 19th century, most scholars adopted the documentary hypothesis . This theory held that the five books of the Pentateuch came from four sources: the Yahwist (abbreviated as J), the Elohist (E), the Deuteronomist (D) and the Priestly source (P). Each source was held to tell the same basic story, with

8085-546: The Garden of Eden . In the second chapter, God commanded the man that he is free to eat from any tree, including the tree of life, except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . Later, in chapter 3, a serpent , portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster , convinces Eve to eat the fruit. She then convinces Adam to eat it, whereupon God throws them out and punishes them—Adam was punished with getting what he needs only by sweat and work, and Eve to giving birth in pain. This

8232-558: The Genesis Rabbah , during Sarah's lifetime her house was always hospitably open, the dough was miraculously increased, a light burned from Friday evening to Saturday evening, and a pillar of cloud rested upon the entrance to her tent. The Islamic portrayal of Sarah, who is unnamed in the Quran , mimics that of her portrayal in Judaism and Christianity, in that she is a good woman, kin and wife to Abraham, who, after years of barrenness , has

8379-587: The Midianites . Abraham dies at a prosperous old age and his family lays him to rest in Hebron (Machpelah). Isaac's wife Rebekah gives birth to the twins Esau (meaning 'velvet'), father of the Edomites , and Jacob (meaning 'supplanter' or 'follower'). Esau was a couple of seconds older as he had come out of the womb first, and was going to become the heir; however, through carelessness, he sold his birthright to Jacob for

8526-496: The Philistine land of Gerar where his father once lived. This land was still under the control of King Abimelech as it was in the days of Abraham. Like his father, Isaac also pretended that Rebekah was his sister due to fear that Abimelech would kill him in order to take her. He had gone back to all of the wells that his father dug and saw that they were all stopped up with earth. The Philistines did this after Abraham died. So, Isaac unearthed them and began to dig for more wells all

8673-413: The Torah's author . It was probably composed around the 5th century BC , although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), may have been composed and added as late as the 3rd century BC. Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological , genetic , and linguistic evidence, some mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical . It

8820-584: The Victorian crisis of faith as evidence mounted that the Earth was far older than six thousand years. It is a custom among religious Jewish communities for a weekly Torah portion , popularly referred to as a parashah , to be read during Jewish prayer services on Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays. The full name, פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ , Parashat ha-Shavua , is popularly abbreviated to parashah (also parshah / p ɑː r ʃ ə / or parsha ), and

8967-824: The Virgin Mary , Anna the Prophetess , the Samaritan woman at the well , Mary of Bethany , Martha , Mary Magdalene , and Lydia of Thyatira . Sarah appears in Slightly Bad Girls of the Bible: Flawed Women Loved by a Flawless God by Liz Curtis Higgs alongside several other biblical women. Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek Γένεσις , Génesis ; Biblical Hebrew : בְּרֵאשִׁית ‎ , romanized:  Bərēʾšīṯ , lit.   'In [the] beginning'; Latin : Liber Genesis )

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9114-420: The land of Goshen . Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future before he dies. Joseph lives to old age and tells his brothers before his death that if God leads them out of the country, then they should take his bones with them. In 1978, David Clines published The Theme of the Pentateuch . Considered influential as one of the first authors to take up the question of the overarching theme of

9261-519: The pharaoh of Egypt asks him to interpret a dream he had about an upcoming famine, which Joseph does through God. He is then made second in command of Egypt by the grateful pharaoh, and later on, he is reunited with his father and brothers, who fail to recognize him and plead for food as the famine had reached Canaan as well. After much manipulation to see if they still hate him, Joseph reveals himself, forgives them for their actions, and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them

9408-448: The 16th to the 19th century treated the book of Genesis as factual. As evidence in the fields of paleontology , geology and other sciences was uncovered, scholars tried to fit these discoveries into the Genesis creation account. For example, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in the 18th century believed that fossils were the remains of creatures killed during the flood. This literal understanding of Genesis fell out of favor with scholars during

9555-520: The 3rd century BC. As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, is that of Persian imperial authorisation. This proposes that the Persians of the Achaemenid Empire , after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce

9702-557: The Chaldees, believed to have been in present-day Iraq , 1,958 Anno Mundi , according to the Hebrew calendar . She was the daughter of Haran and the granddaughter of Terah, an idolater who worshiped the Moon god Nanna and high-ranking servant of Nimrod , the king of Shinar , or Mesopotamia , but not of his wife, Amathlai. Her name is a feminine form of sar ( Hebrew : שַׂר ), meaning "chieftain" or "prince". Through Terah, she would have been

9849-518: The Hebrew Bible, the narratives of Isaac date back to an older cultural stage than that of the West-Jordanian Jacob. At that era, the Israelite tribes were not yet sedentary. In the course of looking for grazing areas, they had come in contact in southern Philistia with the inhabitants of the settled countryside. It has also been argued that the form of Isaac's name as found in the Hebrew Bible

9996-430: The Israelites subsequently lived in that land. Sarai prayed to God to deliver her from the king, and He thereupon sent an angel, who struck Pharaoh whenever he attempted to touch her. Pharaoh was so astonished at these blows that he spoke kindly to Sarai, who confessed that she was Abraham's wife. The king then ceased to annoy her. According to another version, Pharaoh persisted in annoying her after she had told him that she

10143-576: The Lord renew the promise, she laughed inwardly for the same reason. Sarah denied laughing when God questioned Abraham about it. After God changes Abram and Sarai's names to Abraham and Sarah , he tells Abraham that he will bear a second son by Sarah named Isaac, with whom a new covenant would be established. In response, Abraham began to laugh, as both he and Sarah were well beyond natural child-bearing age. Some time later, three men who Abraham identifies as messengers of God visit him and Sarah, and Abraham treats them to food and niceties. They repeat

10290-557: The New Testament theme of Isaac as a type of Christ and the Church being both "the son of the promise" and the "father of the faithful". Tertullian draws a parallel between Isaac's bearing the wood for the sacrificial fire with Christ's carrying his cross. and there was a general agreement that, while all the sacrifices of the Old Law were anticipations of that on Calvary, the sacrifice of Isaac

10437-598: The Patriarchs" ( 2:136 ; 3:84 ). In the Quran's narrative of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son ( 37:102 ), the name of the son is not mentioned and debate has continued over the son's identity, though many feel that the identity is the least important element in a story which is given to show the courage that one develops through faith. The Quran mentions Isaac as a prophet and a righteous man of God . Isaac and Jacob are mentioned as being bestowed upon Abraham as gifts of God, who then worshipped God only and were righteous leaders in

10584-432: The Pentateuch, Clines' conclusion was that the overall theme is "the partial fulfilment—which implies also the partial nonfulfillment—of the promise to or blessing of the Patriarchs". (By calling the fulfilment "partial", Clines was drawing attention to the fact that at the end of Deuteronomy the people of Israel are still outside Canaan.) The patriarchs , or ancestors, are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their wives (Joseph

10731-518: The Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text. Genesis is an example of a work in the "antiquities" genre, as the Romans knew it, a popular genre telling of the appearance of humans and their ancestors and heroes, with elaborate genealogies and chronologies fleshed out with stories and anecdotes. Notable examples are found in

10878-495: The Pharaoh that she is his sister ( Genesis 17 ). She was originally called Sarai . In the narrative of the covenant of the pieces in Genesis 17, during which Yahweh promises Abram that he and Sarai will have a son, Abram is renamed as Abraham and Sarai is renamed as Sarah. According to most modern scholars, both Sarah and Sarai come from the same root SRR, with both meaning "important woman". A minority of scholars derive Sarai from

11025-426: The Quran, Isaac is mentioned in lists: Joseph follows the religion of his forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ( 12:38 ) and speaks of God's favor to them ( 12:6 ); Jacob's sons all testify their faith and promise to worship the God that their forefathers, "Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac", worshiped ( 2:127 ); and the Quran commands Muslims to believe in the revelations that were given to "Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and

11172-511: The Women of Genesis series , Sarai: A Novel by Jill Eileen Smith, and Sarah: A Novel by Marek Halter , and Song of Sarai by Zannah Martin. In the Christian fiction novel Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers , the protagonist, called "Angel" throughout the duration of the story, is barren. At the end of the book, she reveals that her birth name is "Sarah" to her husband, who takes the revelation as

11319-401: The age of 180. According to local tradition, the graves of Isaac and Rebekah , along with the graves of Abraham and Sarah and Jacob and Leah , are in the Cave of the Patriarchs . In rabbinical tradition , the age of Isaac at the time of binding is taken to be 37, which contrasts with common portrayals of Isaac as a child. The rabbis also thought that the reason for the death of Sarah

11466-612: The age of the world since creation. This Anno Mundi system of counting years is the basis of the Hebrew calendar and Byzantine calendar . Counts differ somewhat, but they generally place the age of the Earth at about six thousand years. During the Protestant Reformation , rivalry between Catholic and Protestant Christians led to a closer study of the Bible and a competition to take its words more seriously. Thus, scholars in Europe from

11613-534: The altar and drawn his knife to kill him, at the last moment an angel of God prevented Abraham from proceeding. Instead, he was directed to sacrifice a nearby ram that was stuck in thickets. Before Isaac was 40 (Genesis 25:20), Abraham sent Eliezer , his steward, into Mesopotamia to find a wife for Isaac, from his nephew Bethuel 's family. Eliezer chose the Aramean Rebekah for Isaac. After many years of marriage to Isaac, Rebekah had still not given birth to

11760-565: The analysis of the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle, and the Yahwist and Priestly sources . The problem lies in finding a way to unite the patriarchal theme of the divine promise to the stories of Genesis 1–11 (the primeval history ) with their theme of God's forgiveness in the face of man's evil nature. One solution is to see the patriarchal stories as resulting from God's decision not to remain alienated from humankind: God creates

11907-579: The ancestor worshipped in Beersheba and the oldest tradition about him might be an ancestor myth dating back to at least 8th century BCE as shown in Amos 7:9, while proposing that the story about him conflicting with Abimelech, king of Gerar, and Philistines, which is the story that has possibility that Abraham cycle could have vampirized or vice versa, could have been originated and have background in 7th century BCE, and could be made to aim at justifying and legitimizing

12054-663: The ancestors and peoples who were part of Israel's political world at the time the stories began to be written down (eighth century B.C.E.). Lot is the ancestor of the Transjordanian peoples of Ammon and Moab, and Ishmael personifies the nomadic peoples known to have inhabited north Arabia, although located in the Old Testament in the Negev. Esau personifies Edom (36:1), and Laban represents the Aramean states to Israel's north. A persistent theme

12201-485: The ancestors of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel, and a daughter, Dinah . Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, rapes Dinah and asks his father to get Dinah for him as his wife, according to Chapter 34. Jacob agrees to the marriage but requires that all the males of Hamor's tribe be circumcised, including Hamor and Shechem. After this was performed and all the men were still weak, Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi murdered all

12348-569: The beginning of the 21st century, archaeologists had given up hope of recovering any context that would make the patriarchs and matriarchs credible historical figures. Sarah first appears in the Book of Genesis , while the Midrash and Aggadah provide some additional commentary on her life and role within Judaism and its ancestral form, Yahwism . She is born Sarai ( Hebrew : שָׂרַי) in Ur Kaśdim , or Ur of

12495-496: The benevolent smile of the Canaanite deity El . Genesis ascribes the laughter to Isaac's parents, Abraham and Sarah , instead. According to the biblical narrative, Abraham fell on his face and laughed when God (Hebrew, Elohim ) imparted the news of their son's eventual birth. He laughed because Sarah was past the age of childbearing; both she and Abraham were advanced in age. Later, when Sarah overheard three messengers of

12642-501: The biblical narrative. The place became known as the Cave of the Patriarchs . Sarah is mentioned alongside Abraham in Isaiah 51:2 : The First Epistle of Peter praises Sarah for obeying her husband. She is praised for her faith in the Hebrews "hall of faith" passage alongside a number of other Old Testament figures. Other New Testament references to Sarah are in Romans and Galatians. In Galatians 4 , she and Hagar are used as an allegory of

12789-465: The biblical story that Sarah laughed when she received a divine message confirming her pregnancy, although in the Quran this message is heralded by angels and not by God himself: 11:69 And surely Our messenger-angels came to Abraham with good news ˹of a son˺. They greeted ˹him with˺, “Peace!” And he replied, “Peace ˹be upon you˺!” Then it was not long before he brought ˹them˺ a ˹fat,˺ roasted calf. 11:70 And when he saw that their hands did not reach for

12936-400: The book into the following sections: It is not clear, however, what this meant to the original authors, and most modern commentators divide it into two parts based on the subject matter, a primeval history (chapters 1–11) and a patriarchal history (chapters 12–50). While the first is far shorter than the second, it sets out the basic themes and provides an interpretive key for understanding

13083-406: The boy and sacrificed him. The boy wailed and wept; but he could not escape from his father." Sarah began to cry bitterly, and ultimately died of her grief. According to the other legend, Satan came to Sarah disguised as an old man, and told her that Isaac had been sacrificed. Believing it to be true, she cried bitterly, but soon comforted herself with the thought that the sacrifice had been offered at

13230-419: The child " Isaac " (Hebrew yitschaq, "laughter") and circumcised him when he was eight days old. For Sarah, the thought of giving birth and nursing a child, at such an old age, also brought her much laughter, as she declared, "God had made me to laugh, [so that] all that hear will laugh with me." Abraham held a great feast on the day when Isaac was to be weaned. It was during this banquet that Sarah happened upon

13377-518: The claim of Judah over the Judahite territories that are transferred to the Philistine cities by Sennacherib because of several reasons: it was time when Gerar ( Tel Haror ) had the special importance and fortified Assyrian administration center; there was king of Ashdod , Ahimilki, whose name is similar to that of Abimelech; the Kingdom of Judah could have gotten back parts of Judahite territories while Judah

13524-489: The command of God. She started from Beer-sheba to Hebron, asking everyone she met if he knew in which direction Abraham had gone. Then Satan came again in human shape and told her that it was not true that Isaac had been sacrificed, but that he was living and would soon return with his father. Sarah, on hearing this, died of joy at Hebron. Abraham and Isaac returned to their home at Beer-sheba, and, not finding Sarah there, went to Hebron, where they discovered her dead. According to

13671-544: The covenant with El Shaddai after Hagar bears Abram his first born son Ishmael. Sarai treated Hagar well, and induced women who came to visit her to visit Hagar also. Hagar, when pregnant by Abraham, began to act superciliously toward Sarai, provoking the latter to treat her harshly, to impose heavy work upon her, and even to strike her. Some believe Sarai was originally destined to reach the age of 175 years, but forty-eight years of this span of life were taken away from her because she complained of Abraham, blaming him as though he

13818-675: The cults of the 'God the Fathers' was incorporated into the Israelite creed during the southern-Palestinian stage of the growth of the Pentateuch tradition." According to Martin Noth, at the Southern Palestinian stage of the growth of the Pentateuch tradition, Isaac became established as one of the biblical patriarchs, but his traditions were receded in the favor of Abraham. Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Römer have proposed that Isaac might be

13965-403: The early Hebrew pastoralist experience". The Cambridge Companion to the Bible makes the following comment on the biblical stories of the patriarchs: Yet for all that these stories maintain a distance between their world and that of their time of literary growth and composition, they reflect the political realities of the later periods. Many of the narratives deal with the relationship between

14112-472: The entire book. The primeval history has a symmetrical structure hinging on the flood story (chapters 6–9) with the events before the flood mirrored by the events after. The ancestral history is structured around the three patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. The stories of Isaac arguably do not make up a coherent cycle of stories and function as a bridge between the cycles of Abraham and Jacob. The Genesis creation narrative comprises two different stories;

14259-456: The first two chapters roughly correspond to these. In the first, Elohim , the generic Hebrew word for God, creates the heavens and the earth including humankind, in six days, and rests on the seventh . In the second, God, now referred to as " Yahweh Elohim" (rendered as "the L ORD God" in English translations), creates two individuals, Adam and Eve , as the first man and woman, and places them in

14406-438: The food, he became suspicious and fearful of them. They reassured ˹him˺, “Do not be afraid! We are ˹angels˺ sent ˹only˺ against the people of Lot.” 11:71 And his wife was standing by, so she laughed, then We gave her good news of ˹the birth of˺ Isaac, and, after him, Jacob. 11:72 She wondered, “Oh, my! How can I have a child in this old age, and my husband here is an old man? This is truly an astonishing thing!” Sarah

14553-399: The future promised by God to Abraham. In verse 19, the author views the release of Isaac from sacrifice as analogous to the resurrection of Jesus , the idea of the sacrifice of Isaac being a prefigurement of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross . Islam considers Isaac ( Arabic : إسحاق , romanized :  Isḥāq ) a prophet , and describes him as the father of the Israelites and

14700-426: The generations", with the first use of the phrase referring to the "generations of heaven and earth" and the remainder marking individuals. The toledot formula, occurring eleven times in the book of Genesis, serves as a heading which marks a transition to a new subject. The creation account of Genesis 1 functions as a prologue for the whole book and is not introduced with a toledot . The toledot divide

14847-417: The historicity of Patriarchs' narratives as these are the common Semitic names that were used in the later periods as well. Some scholars have described Isaac as "a legendary figure" or "as a figure representing tribal history, or "as a seminomadic leader". The stories of Isaac, like other patriarchal stories of Genesis, are generally believed to have "their origin in folk memories and oral traditions of

14994-677: The males. Jacob complained that their act would mean retribution by others, namely the Canaanites and Perizzites. Jacob and his tribe took all the Hivite women and children as well as livestock and other property for themselves. Joseph , Jacob's favourite son of the twelve, makes his brothers jealous (especially because of special gifts Jacob gave him) and because of that jealousy they sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt . Joseph endures many trials including being innocently sentenced to jail but he stays faithful to God. After several years, he prospers there after

15141-436: The niece of Abraham and the sister of Lot and Milcah . While in Genesis 20:12 Abraham claims that Sarah "is indeed my sister, my father's daughter" rather than his niece, Rashi asserts that the term "daughter" can also be used regarding a granddaughter, and thus "sister" can be used regarding a niece. The fifth-century rabbinic midrash Genesis Rabbah dedicates a large amount of attention to Sarah in particular. Not only are

15288-450: The notabilities to a banquet on the day when Isaac was to be weaned. Sarah invited the women, also, who brought their infants with them; and on this occasion she gave milk from her breasts to all the strange children, thus convincing the guests of the miracle. Legends connect Sarah's death with the attempted sacrifice of Isaac, however, there are two versions of the story. According to one, Samael came to her and said: "Your old husband seized

15435-412: The old and new covenants: "For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise. These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This

15582-399: The oldest of the biblical patriarchs at the time of his death, and the only patriarch whose name was not changed. Rabbinic literature also linked Isaac's blindness in old age, as stated in the Bible, to the sacrificial binding: Isaac's eyes went blind because the tears of angels present at the time of his sacrifice fell on Isaac's eyes. The early Christian church continued and developed

15729-486: The opposite - that sisters in the region were often awarded the title "wife" in order to give them much greater status in society. Savina Teubal's book Sarah the Priestess posits that while Sarah was indeed both Abram's wife and sister, there was no incest taboo because she was a half-sister by a different mother. Sarah has been featured in several novels, and she is the central character in Sarah by Orson Scott Card in

15876-614: The patriarchs and matriarchs were either real individuals or believable composites of people who lived in the " patriarchal age ", the 2nd millennium BCE. But, in the 1970s, new arguments concerning Israel's past and the biblical texts challenged these views; these arguments can be found in Thomas L. Thompson 's The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (1974), and John Van Seters ' Abraham in History and Tradition (1975). Thompson,

16023-409: The patriarchs that he will be faithful to their descendants (i.e. to Israel), and Israel is expected to have faith in God and his promise. ("Faith" in the context of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible means an agreement to the promissory relationship, not a body of a belief.) The promise itself has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land. The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having

16170-461: The present-day Levant , to save Abraham from a plot by Nimrod to destroy him, commanded to do so by Yahweh . En route to Canaan, the group stopped in Harran , in present-day Turkey, settling there for some twenty years, until Yahweh urged them to move on and so, they left Terah behind, to live out his days, and traveled through Shechem and Bethel , both cities in the present-day West Bank , and, when

16317-493: The promises given at 3:15, 20. After many generations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth, the world becomes corrupted by human sin and Nephilim , and God wants to wipe out humanity for their wickedness. However, Noah is righteous and blameless. So first, he instructs the Noah to build an ark and put examples of all the animals on it, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean. Then God sends

16464-426: The prophecy that Sarah would bear a child, promising Isaac's birth within a year's time, at which point Sarah laughs in disbelief. God questions why the pair laughed in disbelief at his words, and if it is because they believe such things were not within his power. Now afraid, they futilely deny ever having laughed at God's words. Time passes as Isaac is born. Isaac was Abraham's second son and firstborn of Sarah who

16611-417: The rabbis used their portrayal of Sarah to establish her as a Jewish alternative to the Virgin Mary. When brought before Pharaoh, Sarah said that Abram was her brother, and the king thereupon bestowed upon the latter many presents and marks of distinction. As a token of his love for Sarai the king deeded his entire property to her, and gave her the land of Goshen as her hereditary possession: for this reason

16758-569: The relationship between man and God. The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel , God's chosen people . At God's command, Noah's descendant Abraham journeys from his birthplace (described as Ur of the Chaldeans and whose identification with Sumerian Ur is tentative in modern scholarship ) into the God-given land of Canaan , where he dwells as a sojourner , as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob . Jacob's name

16905-567: The root SRY, meaning "contend with" or "withstand", similar to the name Israel . Terah, with Abram (as he was then called), Sarai and Lot, departed for Canaan , but stopped in a place named Haran , where Terah remained until he died at the age of 205. Yahweh had told Abram to leave his country and his father's house for a land that he would show him, promising to make of him a great nation, bless him, make his name great, bless those who blessed him, and curse "him" that curses him. Following God's command, Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and

17052-448: The sacrifice and was revived. According to many accounts of Aggadah , unlike the Bible, it is Satan who is testing Isaac as an agent of God . Isaac's willingness to follow God's command at the cost of his death has been a model for many Jews who preferred martyrdom to violation of the Jewish law . According to the Jewish tradition, Isaac instituted the afternoon prayer. This tradition

17199-415: The sins of their people. Abraham protests, but fails to get God to agree not to destroy the cities (reasoning with Abraham that not even ten righteous persons were found there; and among the righteous was Abraham's nephew Lot ). Angels save Abraham's nephew Lot (who was living there at the same time) and his family, but his wife looks back on the destruction, (even though God commanded not to) and turns into

17346-502: The sources later combined by various editors. Scholars were able to distinguish sources based on the designations for God. For example, the Yahwist source uses Yahweh, while the Elohistic and Priestly sources use Elohim. Scholars also use repeated and duplicate stories to identify separate sources. In Genesis, these include the two creation stories, three different wife–sister narratives , and

17493-675: The text of surviving copies varies. There are four major groupings of surviving manuscripts: the Masoretic Text , the Samaritan Pentateuch (in Samaritan script ), the Septuagint (a Greek translation), and fragments of Genesis found in the Dead Sea Scrolls . The Dead Sea Scrolls are oldest but cover only a small proportion of the book. Genesis appears to be structured around the recurring phrase elleh toledot , meaning "these are

17640-508: The then teenaged Ishmael mocking Isaac and was so disturbed that she requested that both he and Hagar be banished. Abraham was initially distressed by this but relented when told by God to do as his wife had asked. After being visited by the three men, Abraham and Sarah settled between Kadesh and Shur in the land of the Philistines . While he was living in Gerar , Abraham again claimed that Sarah

17787-616: The title the Sunday of the Forefathers . Isaac is commemorated in the Catholic Church on 25 March or on 17 December. The New Testament states Isaac was "offered up" by his father Abraham, and that Isaac blessed his sons. Paul contrasted Isaac, symbolizing Christian liberty , with the rejected older son Ishmael, symbolizing slavery; Hagar is associated with the Sinai covenant, while Sarah

17934-511: The two versions of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert. According to the documentary hypothesis, J was produced during the 9th century BC in the southern Kingdom of Judah and was believed to be the earliest source. E was written in the northern Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BC. D was written in Judah in the 7th century BC and associated with the religious reforms of King Josiah c.  625 BC . The latest source

18081-463: The variety of different and often conflicting versions of stories, and to relate the stories to each other, they fitted them into a genealogical chronology." Tremper Longman describes Genesis as theological history: "the fact that these events took place is assumed, and not argued. The concern of the text is not to prove the history but rather to impress the reader with the theological significance of these acts". The original manuscripts are lost, and

18228-497: The vulnerability felt by ancient Israelites and that "such stories can be a major way of gaining hope and resisting domination". Examples include: In both Judaism and Christianity , a genre of literature emerged dedicated to interpreting and commenting on the Genesis creation narrative, known as the Hexaemeron . By totaling the spans of time in the genealogies of Genesis, religious authorities have calculated what they consider to be

18375-400: The way of God: And We bestowed on him Isaac and, as an additional gift, (a grandson), Jacob, and We made righteous men of every one (of them). And We made them leaders, guiding (men) by Our Command, and We sent them inspiration to do good deeds, to establish regular prayers, and to practise regular charity; and they constantly served Us (and Us only). And WE gave him the glad tidings of Isaac,

18522-472: The way to Beersheba , where he made a pact with Abimelech, just like in the day of his father. Isaac grew old and became blind. He called his son Esau and directed him to procure some venison for him, in order to receive Isaac's blessing. While Esau was hunting, Jacob, after listening to his mother's advice, deceived his blind father by misrepresenting himself as Esau and thereby obtained his father's blessing, such that Jacob became Isaac's primary heir and Esau

18669-458: The wealth and slaves that they had acquired, and traveled to Shechem in Canaan . Abram was 75 at this time. There was a severe famine in the land of Canaan, so Abram and Lot and their households travelled south to Egypt . On the journey to Egypt, Abram instructed Sarai to identify herself only as his sister, fearing that the Egyptians would kill him in order to take his wife, saying, I know what

18816-473: The work of Greek historians of the 6th century BC: their intention was to connect notable families of their own day to a distant and heroic past, and in doing so they did not distinguish between myth , legend , and facts. Professor Jean-Louis Ska of the Pontifical Biblical Institute calls the basic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old is valuable, nothing

18963-510: The world and humans, humans rebel, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham. To this basic plot (which comes from the Yahwist), the Priestly source has added a series of covenants dividing history into stages, each with its own distinctive "sign". The first covenant is between God and all living creatures, and is marked by the sign of the rainbow; the second is with the descendants of Abraham ( Ishmaelites and others as well as Israelites), and its sign

19110-401: The world" attains salvation from famine, and by bringing the children of Israel down to Egypt he becomes the means through which the promise can be fulfilled. Scholars generally agree that the theme of divine promise unites the patriarchal cycles, but many would dispute the efficacy of trying to examine Genesis' theology by pursuing a single overarching theme, instead citing as more productive

19257-680: The wrath of a god, but, also like Pharaoh, he bestows great wealth upon Abraham. The two men part amicably, with Abraham saying he will pray for the king, who is childless and without an heir. It is said that Sarah died at the age of one hundred and twenty seven years, caused in part by the events of the Binding of Isaac . She is buried in Kiryat Arba , in Hebron , in the Cave of Machpela . The Talmud identifies Sarai with Iscah , daughter of Abraham's deceased brother Haran, so that in this Sarah turns out to be

19404-493: Was Abram's wife and demanded that they leave Egypt immediately. After having lived in Canaan for ten years and still childless, Sarai suggested that Abram have a child with her Egyptian handmaiden Hagar , to which he agreed. This resulted in tension between Sarai and Hagar, and Sarai complained to her husband that the handmaid no longer respected her. At one point, Hagar fled from her mistress but returned after angels consoled her. She gave birth to Abram's son Ishmael when Abram

19551-462: Was P, which was written during the 5th century in Babylon . Based on these dates, Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch did not reach its final, present-day form until after the Babylonian Exile. Julius Wellhausen argued that the Pentateuch was finalized in the time of Ezra . Ezra 7 :14 records that Ezra traveled from Babylon to Jerusalem in 458 BC with God's law in his hand. Wellhausen argued that this

19698-463: Was a compliant vassal of Assyria under Manasseh . In addition, Finkelstein and Römer proposed that Abraham might be the ancestor worshipped in Hebron, and Jacob might be the ancestor worshipped in Israel, but the earliest tradition of Jacob, the tradition about him and his uncle Laban the Aramean establishing the border between them, might be originated in Gilead. The earliest Christian portrayal of Isaac

19845-568: Was a married woman; thereupon the angel struck him so violently that he became ill, and was thereby prevented from continuing to trouble her. According to one tradition it was when Pharaoh saw these miracles wrought in Sarai's behalf that he gave her his daughter Hagar as slave, saying: "It is better that my daughter should be a slave in the house of such a woman than mistress in another house." Abimelech acted likewise. In Genesis 17:15, God changes her name to Sarah (princess) ("a woman of high rank") as part of

19992-421: Was actually Hagar ), and by her had at least six more children. In the biblical narrative, Sarah is the wife of Abraham. In two places in the narrative he says Sarah is his sister (Genesis 12:10 through 13:1, in the encounter with Pharaoh, and Genesis 20, in the encounter with Abimelech). Knowing Sarah to be a great beauty and fearing that the Pharaoh would kill Abraham to be with Sarah, Abraham asks Sarah to tell

20139-425: Was composed in the time of King Solomon by a priest or Levite . This author used the Hebrew word elohim for God. This original work was expanded in the 8th century BC, with the name Yahweh used for God. In the 7th century BC, during the time of Jeremiah , the final parts of the Pentateuch were added, specifically the main parts of Deuteronomy. This would mean the Pentateuch achieved its final form before

20286-457: Was eighty-six years old. In Genesis 17 when Abram was ninety-nine years old, God declared his new name: "Abraham" – "a father of many nations", and gave him the covenant of circumcision. God gave Sarai the new name "Sarah", and blessed her. Abraham was given assurance that Sarah would have a son. Not long afterwards, Abraham and Sarah were visited by three men . One of the visitors told Abraham that upon his return next year, Sarah would have

20433-412: Was his sister. King Abimelech subsequently had her brought to him. Later, God came to Abimelech in a dream and declared that taking her would result in death because she was a married woman. Abimelech, who had not laid hands on her, inquired if he would also slay a righteous nation, especially since Abraham had claimed that he and Sarah were siblings. In response, God told Abimelech that he did indeed have

20580-422: Was left in an inferior position. According to Genesis 25:29–34, Esau had previously sold his birthright to Jacob for "bread and stew of lentils". Thereafter, Isaac sent Jacob into Mesopotamia to take a wife of his mother's brother's house. After 20 years working for his uncle Laban , Jacob returned home. He reconciled with his twin brother Esau, then he and Esau buried their father, Isaac, in Hebron after he died at

20727-512: Was no fear of God in that place, and that they might kill him for his wife. Then Abraham defended what he had said as not being a lie at all: "And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife." Abimelech returned Sarah to Abraham, and gave him gifts of sheep, oxen, and servants; and invited him to settle wherever he pleased in Abimelech's lands. Further, Abimelech gave Abraham

20874-761: Was so "in a pre-eminent way". The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church consider Isaac as a saint along with other biblical patriarchs . Along with those of other patriarchs and the Old Testament Righteous, his feast day is celebrated in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Byzantine rite of the Catholic Church on the Second Sunday before Christmas (December 11–17), under

21021-428: Was the cause that Hagar no longer respected her. Sarah was sterile; but a miracle was granted to her after her name was changed from "Sarai" to "Sarah". According to one myth, when her fertility had been restored and she had given birth to Isaac , the people would not believe in the miracle, saying that the patriarch and his wife had adopted a foundling and pretended that it was their own son. Abraham thereupon invited all

21168-403: Was the newly compiled Pentateuch. Nehemiah 8 – 10 , according to Wellhausen, describes the publication and public acceptance of this new law code c.  444 BC . There was now a large gap between the earliest sources of the Pentateuch and the period they claimed to describe, which ended c.  1200 BC . Most scholars held to the documentary hypothesis until the 1980s. Since then,

21315-415: Was the news of the intended sacrifice of Isaac. The sacrifice of Isaac is cited in appeals for the mercy of God in later Jewish traditions. The post-biblical Jewish interpretations often elaborate the role of Isaac beyond the biblical description and primarily focus on Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac, called the aqedah ("binding"). According to a version of these interpretations, Isaac died in

21462-500: Was then Sarai. Sarai had been barren for a long time and sought a way to fulfill God's promise that Abram would be father of many nations, especially since they had grown old, so she offered Hagar to Abram to be his concubine. On the eighth day from his birth, Isaac was circumcised , as was necessary for all males of Abraham's household, in order to be in compliance with the Jewish covenant. After Isaac had been weaned, Sarah saw Ishmael playing with or mocking him (the Hebrew term

21609-455: Was written anonymously, but both Jewish and Christian religious tradition attributes the entire Pentateuch —Genesis, Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy —to Moses . During the Enlightenment , the philosophers Benedict Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes questioned Mosaic authorship . In the 17th century, Richard Simon proposed that the Pentateuch was written by multiple authors over

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